Hair dryers that are portable and hand-held typically have two classifications, a first classification being for personal individual use and a second for professional salon use. The personal use hair dryer is usually used once daily in a person's home, wherein the design objective is primarily low cost resulting in minimal features suitable for the occasional use of the hair dryer by the individual. Thus, the personal hair dryer would have a simple fixed integral handle, no removably engagable brush attachments, lack any provision for sound attenuation, and further usually no effort is put into having an ergonomic handle that is designed to balance the center of gravity of the hair dryer for minimal hand and wrist fatigue.
Wherein, with the second classification for the professional hair dryer that would be typically used 30 or so times a day by the same stylist in a salon environment with numerous other stylists, thus using the hair dryer at a rate of about 30 times of what the personal hair dryer would be used by an individual. Thus, a number of additional factors come into play with the professional hair dryer, such as usage durability, hand and wrist stress/fatigue with holding and using the hair dryer many times per day in having issues similar to the well-known carpal-tunnel syndrome from a high number of repetitive hand and wrist motions, further the increased noise from up to 30 or so hair dryers operating simultaneously in the same environmental space can be also fatiguing as well as possibly causing hearing damage. As fan noise is primarily related to air velocity, such that higher velocity equals higher noise, which is what the personal hair dryers have to reduce costs, such that having smaller size air flow passageways reduces the housing size and cost while higher air velocity requires less heating element insulation also reducing cost, however, with the result that the hair dryer makes more noise. Thus the personal dryer outputs a high temperature flow of high velocity air that works well for what most personal users want being that the hair dryer is primarily a fast hair blow drying appliance and not primarily used for hair styling which would more encompass salon use.
Thus with the professional hair dryer, styling is more of a primary use, in desiring the removably engagable brushes, wherein slower drying of hair would also be desirable. Further, with the professional hair dryer an enhanced design could include features such as an ergonomically designed handle that through variable structure would be able to alter positional orientations as between the hair dryer outlet and the operator's hand and wrist to reduce fatigue of the hand and wrist. In addition, design could be done to attenuate the noise produced outside of the hair dryer enclosure or housing, and having removably engagable brushes for operator convenience to quickly and easily change brush types for hair styling. Naturally these enhancements to the professional hair dryer would add cost, however, it is anticipated that the professional operators or users would pay more for a value added product, being an analogy with mechanics tools, wherein the personal occasional tool user can get by with low quality low cost tools, wherein someone who makes their living using tools daily will benefit from higher quality tools and thus will pay for them.
In looking at the prior art in the hair dryer area, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,067,724 to Depoyian disclosed is a hair dryer that has interchangeable brush heads that are removably engagable to the dryer body, wherein the brush heads are hollow that allow the hair dryer air to flow therethrough the brush bristles, see FIGS. 1, 4, 8, and 9. In Depoyian, the hair dryer also can have a pivotable handle, see FIG. 11, that allows an electrical power wire through a slot to facilitate the handle pivotal movement in relation to the hair dryer body, see FIG. 14 with only the disclosed ability to lock the handle at only the in-line and right angle positions, see FIG. 2A. Further, in Depoyian the handle pivotal locks are structured to be V-shaped projections that are ninety degrees apart that are matched to a pair of recesses for the purpose of locking the pivotal handle in only the two positions only at the in-line and right angle, see FIGS. 11, 13, 14, and 15.
Further, in looking at the prior art in the hair dryer area, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,198,556 to Crowley, et al., disclosed is a hair-drying appliance having a cylindrical housing and a handle rotatably mounted at one end thereof for movement between a first position generally perpendicular to the housing and a second position in longitudinal alignment with the housing. In Crowley, a single locking lever is provided for latching the handle in either of its positions wherein the appliance has a first air outlet at one end of the cylindrical housing and a second air outlet in the side wall of the housing adjacent the first air outlet. Further, in Crowley an adaptor, which is mountable on the housing adjacent the second air outlet only when the handle is in its second aligned position, has a plate portion for blocking the first air outlet and means for supporting comb and brush attachments thereon. Crowley has a two position handle being for use as a pistol gun type handle arrangement or as an elongated straight bodied dryer only. Crowley also teaches multiple attachments for brushes and combs that the air can blow therethrough.
Continuing, in the portable hair dryer arts, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,846,047 to Wada, et al., disclosed is a foldable hair dryer consisting of a hollow nozzle assembly made up of a cylindrical portion and tangentially extending nozzle coaxially fitted into a handle assembly having a cylindrical portion and tangentially extending handle, the two assemblies being generally symmetrical. In Wada, the thickness of the nozzle, handle and their associated cylindrical portions, measured axially, is approximately the same resulting in a compact, “flat” construction, see in particular FIG. 3.
Further in Wada, within the cylindrical portion of the nozzle assembly is mounted a motor and fan assembly also of “flat” configuration in which the blades of the fan are peripherally disposed about the motor wherein the nozzle is fitted with a heating element. The nozzle and handle assemblies in Wada are coaxially pivoted for movement between an operating condition, see FIG. 2 in which the nozzle and handle are in “L” configuration and a collapsed condition in which the nozzle and handle lie compactly side by side, see FIG. 3. Also, in Wada a switch on the handle is operated by the nozzle incident to the collapsing movement to insure that the motor and heating element are both turned off in the collapsed state, again see FIGS. 2 and 3. Thus in Wada the hair dryer is only foldable for portability purposes.
Moving onward in the portable hair dryer arts, in U.S. Pat. No. 8,813,384 to Correll, Jr., et al., disclosed is a hair dryer having a handle that may both be pivoted toward the dryer housing, and rotated with respect to the dryer housing so that the dryer may easily be operated in either a handle-held or nozzle-held mode, wherein the handle has two pivotal axes of movement. The hair dryer in Correll includes a dual axis joint assembly connecting the handle to the dryer housing that allows the handle to be rotated around its longitudinal axis before or during the time it is pivoted toward the dryer housing so that the control switch remains exposed and operable by a user when the handle is pivotally folded against the dryer body in preparation for nozzle-held operation, see FIGS. 6, 7, 11A, and 11B.
The dual axis joint assembly in Correll may include an eccentric mechanism that converts pivoting movement of the handle toward and away from the housing into rotational movement of said handle so that the handle turns 90 degrees when pivotally folded against the dryer housing, see the pictorial sequence in going from FIGS. 10 to 11A to 11B to 12. Additionally, Correll has the electrical cord connection for supplying power to the blower assembly within the dryer housing is mounted on the blower assembly portion of the housing opposite the nozzle instead of on the handle so that the electrical cord does not interfere with the nozzle held operation of the dryer, see FIG. 10. The primary advantage that Correll teaches is the adjustable movement of the control switches through handle rotational movement that is convenient when assuming different hand hold positions about the handle.
Next, in the portable hair dryer appliance arts specifically relating to noise reduction, in U.S. Pat. No. 8,307,948 to Parodi disclosed is a noise silencer device for a hair dryer that comprises a container structure exhibiting a plurality of inlet openings, an outlet opening, and a conduit connecting the inlet and outlet openings to one another and further comprising a ring made of sound-absorbent material that is inserted in the conduit such as to interfere with a flow of air between the inlet openings and the outlet opening in such a way as to at least partly attenuate sound vibrations associated to the air flow. The inlet openings in Parodi are made on a lateral wall of the container structure and face the axis such as to define an air flow along a first transversal direction to the axis such as to define a flow of air along a first transversal direction to the axis, and deviating means arranged in the conduit impress an axial deviation along the axis on the air flow coming from the inlet openings. Thus Parodi utilizes sound attenuation with enclosure modifications as opposed to reducing sound at the root source, wherein the teaching is strictly related to the inlet of the hair dryer via dampening noise vibrations within the inlet housing.
Further, in the hair dryer arts, again specifically relating to noise reduction, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,011,903 to Nosenchuck, disclosed an axial flow hair dryer that comprises a generally circular main housing with a transitional portion that smoothly reduces the housing diameter to an outlet. Nosenchuck has a first fan stage in the main housing generates an axial air flow through the housing, wherein an outer duct has two axial extensions secured to the housing near the beginning of the transitional portion, and the housing air outlet introduces air exiting the housing into the outer duct. The housing in Nosenchuck and the outer ducts form two additional ambient air intakes extending between the axial extensions in a smooth arc toward the main housing outlet with a second fan stage that includes a second axial flow impeller in the outer duct for generating air flow through the ambient air intake.
In Nosenchuck, the second axial flow impeller includes inner and outer blades separated by an annular shroud that forms an extension of the main housing flow passage. A guide duct in Nosenchuck, being in the outer duct forms a further extension of the extended air flow passage, and the guide duct includes stator vanes at its outlet. Further, Nosenchuck has a handle depending from the main housing that holds a motor and a flex shaft that connects the motor to a drive shaft that carries both fan stages. In addition, Nosenchuck has resistance heating wires in the main housing heat the air flowing through the hair dryer. Nosenchuck increases the mass flow rate of air via a two stage axial fan, thus reducing the need for higher rotating speed fans which of course helps keep the noise down.
What is needed is a hair dryer apparatus that is specifically designed for the professional salon user market having a multiple adjusting handle, balanced center of gravity design both for minimizing hand and wrist fatigue during frequent repeated uses. In addition, to accommodate hair styling and drying with removably engagable brushes, plus noise attenuation features for facilitating a more pleasing environment wherein numerous portable hair dryers are in use simultaneously in the same environmental space, such as in a salon.